§ Statement of Purpose

The View from 1776 presents a framework to understand present-day issues from the viewpoint of the colonists who fought for American independence in 1776 and wrote the Constitution in 1787. Knowing and preserving those understandings, what might be called the unwritten constitution of our nation, is vital to preserving constitutional government. Without them, the bare words of the Constitution are just a Rorschach ink-blot that politicians, educators, and judges can interpret to mean anything they wish.

"We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams, to the Officers of the First Brigade, Third Division, Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798.

—Part V: The rights of private property, the single most important foundation block of English and American constitutionalism.

—Part VI: Marbury v. Madison, decided in 1803, established the precedent that the Supreme Court has the power to declare Presidential and Congressional actions unconstitutional.? It was the start of judicial activism.

—Part VII: The second broadly defined period of judicial activism started in the years leading up to the Civil War, when the Supreme Court wrestled with Federal-state conflicts produced by the growth in commerce among the states and the changing nature of corporations and property rights.

—Part VIII: Judicial activism since the 1950s has been driven by liberalism?s presumption that the mind of man controls everything, therefore any perceived imperfection in social conditions must, and can, be righted.? Katrina?s destruction offers us a glimpse of a liberal social-justice issue aborning: tort-bar manufactured suits against insurance companies.